Politics & Council
12 March, 2026
Strategic planning is missing in management of road network
Carly Noble, an Arnold West resident, writes on her concerns about road network maintenance
THE Department of Transport and Planning is acting within the letter of the Road Management Act 2004, but the outcome exposes a failure of transport policy, planning priorities, and governance.
The DTP is legally compliant with the Road Management Act 2004, which removes any duty to upgrade a road beyond its original standard. Its own road management plan permits risk based prioritisation and lower service levels for Category 5 roads, otherwise known as roads, that have outgrown their design, such as that of Arnold Road in Bridgewater on Loddon (C247).
The Department of Transport and Planning have a responsibility to ensure inspection and maintenance duties focus on minimum safety, not capacity or design adequacy.
Furthermore, the current transport policy framework has no effective mechanism to escalate substandard regional arterial roads that have evolved beyond their original design role such as the section between Pondage Road and the Calder Highway (A7) intersection.
Arnold Road functions as a regional connector and a freight link between major highways such as the Wimmera Highway and the Calder Highway. According to the Department of Transport and Planning Road Management Act, Arnold Road is deemed a low priority Category 5 arterial with road standards aligned to historical function and not current function nor safety.
I am of the belief that modern transport policy should adapt road standards to actual use, not legacy classification. It freezes roads such as Arnold Road in outdated categories.
The Victorian government priorities category-based governance and continues to lock in under investment in regional roads. Road Management Categories were designed for maintenance prioritisation. Now they are used as de facto investment exclusion tools.
Rarely will the Department of Transport and Planning implement a business case proposal or seek capacity reviews or consider strategic upgrades once a road has been classified as a category 5. Categories within the Road Management Act were never intended to become permanent ceilings on infrastructure ambition.
Over the years, the Victorian Government has not formally reviewed the pathway for recategorisation nor considered the evolving risk or function of roads across regional Victoria.
Instead of upgrading roads to ensure road users are safe, the Department of Transport and Planning has introduced speed reductions, implemented warning signage such as flash flooding, introduced reactive maintenance and incremental patching. This is not road safety.
The Department of Transport and Planning has not mitigated risk, instead treating the symptoms that continue to grow year in year out. Duplication or realignment is an effective causebased prevention. In other words, the Department of Transport and Planning policy response accepts ongoing risk and manages its consequences, rather than eliminating the risk through design.
The Department of Transport and Planning has failed regional road users. The Victorian government continues to inject money into metropolitan roads, balancing their responsibility based on forward planning, corridor protection and early duplication, all the while, ignoring regional roads, which are left to deteriorate, drivers experience regular crashes and this generate public outcry as no funding has been prioritized for high-risk arterial roads. The Victorian government has effectively created a twotier transport system. This is a system
that waits for tragedy before change and regional communities such as Loddon Shire yet again bar the higher risk. Unfortunately, it takes a death on a regional road before policy attention is triggered.
Section 40(2) of the Road Management Act protects the Victorian State government from automatic liability, but policy should not rely on liability avoidance as a substitute for strategic planning.
This is not a failure of law, but a failure of policy to adapt infrastructure planning to the realities of regional transport demand, leaving communities such as Loddon Shire legally serviced but strategically neglected.
Read More: Arnold West